EVENTS

A little outing

Five men allegedly shaved off the hair and eyebrows of a young woman and paraded her in the streets of a village in Pakistan’s Punjab province, police officials said Tuesday.

The incident occurred yesterday in Layyah district, 350 km from Lahore, after the married woman was accused of having “illicit” relations with a man.

According to an FIR registered by police, Parveen Bibi, 25, the wife of Sabir Husain, had a quarrel with her sisters-in-law.
Yesterday, her brothers-in-law Muhammad Pervaiz and Muhammad Zafar and three other men shaved off her hair and eyebrows. They then blackened her face and paraded her through the streets of their village.

The fugly face of patriarchy. This one is in Pakistan, but such incidents are not unheard of even in India and Bangladesh; they are the same people, after all – regardless of geopolitical boundaries.

Note that some women are complicit in this violent bullying and humiliation. They, too, have been touched by the putrescent stench of patriarchy in a slightly different way; they just may not know it yet.

Those who haven’t already, follow the link in the post #1. You’d be shocked (or perhaps not). This is the backdrop for the conviction of poor Rimsha Masih under blasphemy law in Pakistan. Religion does melt away the brain, I am sure of it.

I suppose we should feel relief that they ‘only’ shaved her hair and eyebrows and blackened her face before parading her? Maybe this hapless woman should be grateful that at least they didn’t parade her naked, or make her eat excrement, or gang-rape her, or stone her to death (all of these things have been done to victims in villages in India and Pakistan)?

If the original observer had been well-versed enough in reading he would have taken little to no notice of the burnt pages. If any of the others involved in the chain of events and accusations had enough education to know what they were dealing with, they would have soothed or smoothed the annoyance and upset of those who couldn’t read or understand.

The best thing anyone can do to improve the lot of all of the people concerned is to find a way to increase the level of education of the community. Or at least for people to respect the education and understanding of the more educated among them. The most telling thing for me is that the local imam could think of no other reason for learning to read than to read the Koran. Knowing how to read for the sake of understanding health information or newspapers or government announcements or simply to know. more. stuff. ought to be the baseline.